We took a few shots of Foster + Partners’ latest addition to the Bowery – a new gallery to house the Sperone Westwater’s growing collection from prominent artists of different nationalities and ages. Sitting a few steps away from SANAA’s musuem, this new gallery’s CNC milled glass facade elegantly responds to its neighboring art museum. According to Foster, the gallery is “both a response to the dynamic urban character of New York’s Bowery and a desire to rethink the way in which the public engages with art in the setting of a gallery.”

Check out some photos after the break.

Robin Pogrebin of The New York Times recently reported that Raj Ahuja, an Indian-born architect who joined Philip Johnson’s firm back in 1971 and became a partner in 1984, will be selling the architect’s archive of sketches. And, this isn’t any ordinary sketchbook. Johnson’s collection includes over 25,000 design sketches, working drawings, renderings and photographs that cover more than 120 projects from 1968 to 1992. After a bankruptcy claim left the work in Ahuja’s possession, he has been waiting to “transfer it to respectful hands” with the hope that a single institution will acquire the entire collection so as not to break up the archive.

More about the collection after the break.

Check out Chris Lovett’s video we spotted about the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s proposed guidelines for development around the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Greenway has the potential to become a highly activated public realm fusing commercial entities with cultural institutes, both on and off the Greenway. The interview features Mike Davis’, the Commissioner of Public Policy for the Boston Society of Architects and VP and principal with Bergmeyer, thoughts on guidelines, such as height restrictions but more importantly, Davis stresses the importance of connectivity and form. Although several proposed ideas have met challenges and will not be realized, the BSA is trying to push the planning for the Greenway forward. By developing these empty parcels, the Greenway will transform to become a completely viable component to the Boston area.

While designing a house for their friends, Huttunen + Lipasti + Pakkanen Architects’ residence enhances a simplistic form with an acute attention to material selection and detailing. Situated in the rocky island terrain of Naantali, Finland, Villa Mecklin was built at a leisurely pace with the architects working through construction details on site. “Villa Mecklin has mainly been a self-build project. Contract documents or complete working drawings were not necessary because any problems were resolved on site,” explained the architects.

More photographs and more about the residence after the break.

Studio Shift’s proposal for the World Sustainability Center in Afsluitdijk, Netherlands offers flexible environments to accommodate an educational conservation facility for both students and researchers, as well as the general public. The strong geometric complex emphasizes different connections on the macro scale, by relating to other major metropolises, infrastructures, educational facilities and park systems, and the micro scale by fusing its own new “sphere of influence” with its immediate community.

More images, diagrams, drawings and information after the break.

As the long days of summer are sadly coming to an end, architecture students across the world will be heading back to their universities and preparing for their next studio projects. While the upcoming semester will allow students to master the latest digital modeling programs and perfect their physical modeling skills, the value of reading architectural books (whether they be reference, theory, etc.) should not be overlooked. We found a few lists of books that are categorized as “the essentials” for any architecture student. For instance, Amazon.com’s list includes: Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, 2nd Edition, Norman Potter’s What is a Designer: Things, Places, Messages and Marc-Antoine Laugier’s Essay on Architecture.ArchiNinja’s list includes Matthew Frederick’s 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, 10×10 by Editors of Phaidon Press and A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series) by the Center for Environmental Structure Series. And, About.com Architecture’s reference list includes Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, Willem Van Vliet’s The Encyclopedia of Housing and James P. Cramer’s Almanac of Architecture & Design 2005, Sixth Edition (Almanac of Architecture and Design).

In just a few short weeks, the 12th International Architecture Exhibition directed by Kazuyo Sejima, will commence in Venice. Sejima has a long history with the Venice exhibition as she, paired with Ryue Nishizawa, organized the Japanese Pavilion, City of Girls, for the 7th International Architecture Exhibition in 2000 and won the Golden Lion in 2004 for the most significant work of the 9th International Architecture Exhibition. Now, she will be the first woman to direct the Architecture Sector of the Biennale. “The twenty-first century has just started. Many radical changes are taking place. In such a rapid-changing context, can architecture clarify new values and a new lifestyle for the present? Hopefully, this show will be a chance to experience the manifold possibilities of architecture, as well as to account for its plurality of approaches, each one of them being a different way of living,” explained Sejima.

More about the Biennale, including a video of Sejima’s introduction, after the break.

Our director, David Assael, took some shots of Gehry’s latest creation – a wavy residential tower clad in undulating metal panels. While still in the construction phase, it is easy to get the overall idea of the structure. In person, the tower demands attention as its presence, due both to scale and materiality, is unmatched within its context. Throughout the day, the light plays upon the curves making the hard metallic color almost glisten. Some of Assael’s photos capture the tower in the early evening – the perfect time of day to see the reds and oranges of the setting sun against the building. What do you think of Gehry’s skyscraper?

More of Assael’s photos after the break.

A short while ago, we shared Apple’s latest cylindrical store designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in Shanghai (check out great photo sets by Flickr user Lesh51 and Roy Zipstein previously featured on AD). This Saturday morning, Apple is set to open its biggest store yet! The 30,1000 ft store will be situated in Covent Garden in London with more space, more staff and more merchandise than any other Apple store. The project is a refurbishment of an 1876 building featuring Peter Bohlin’s classical glass and steel details, such as the trademark Apple staircases. While Bohlin had to work within an existing framework, he was still able to bring Apple’s personality into the project. Each room is dedicated to a specific Apple gadet, whether it be an iPod or a Mac book, and entire walls are covered with rows of iPads. If you’re in the area, let us know what you think of the new store!

An installation designed by Raurouw (Arnd-Benedikt Willert-Klasing, Filippo Lodi, Jörg Petri, and Kyriakos Chatziparaskevas), a group of young architects experimenting with ideas of a continuously changing atmosphere, has just opened at the Program Gallery in Berlin. Entitled ‘Shock Control Regression Adaptation’, the laser-installation developed by Raurouw transforms the exhibition space into a place of continuously changing atmospheric conditions.

More about the installation, including more images after the break.

Those flying to the Maldives, a nation in the Indian Ocean comprised of amazing coral islands, will be welcomed by a gently undulating airport designed by UK based Haptic Architects and Norway based Narud Stokke Wiig Architects. The firms have collaborated to create this curvaceous terminal that sits in the lagoon so as not to detract from any of the islands’ beautiful coasts.

More about the airport after the break.

A few years ago, Jean Nouvel unveiled his plans for two towers for Sydney City, and now, the project has just received approval. Located on the site of a former brewery, the towers – one 16 stories and the other 33 – are part of the 250,000 sqm development plan managed by Frasers Property.

More about the towers and more images after the break. 

An exhibit on display at Café Moskau in Berlin, a historic building from the early 1960s, is currently showing hundreds of unbuilt past visions for the city. Collected by architect Carsten Krohn, the unbuilt Berlin projects showcase architects’ relentless fascination with the city that has such a rich history. The projects, which were designed between 1907 and 1997, exemplify different theories and design approaches of the era. The proposals, although all different, share the common desire to re-conceptualize and challenge the accepted architectural ways of the time. The projects were a way for the architects to create a new identity for the city with dramatically cutting edge ideas – such as Mies van der Rohe’s plans for a skyscraper on Friedrich Strasse in 1921.

A recent graduate from London’s Bartlett School of Architecture, Richard Hardy has produced a fascinating animation for Nic Clear’s Unit 15 that pushes futuristic architecture to a new level. Using David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest’, a novel that questions certain aspects of Americans’ obsessive behavior – in terms of the intense fascination with entertainment, materialism, technology etc – the studio challenged students to analyze the implications of society’s “obsessive/addictive behavior…to develop tactics to cope with the difficulties of creating an architecture in uncertain times.”

More about the project after the break.

Based in Berlin, Plastique Fantastique experiments with public architectural works to create unique spatial experiences right in the middle of a city. These giant plastic bubble installations which take on different shapes in different cities, immediately snatch people’s attention and create a temporary focal point in the city centers.

More about the bubbles after the break.

A short while ago, we shared Studio 27 Architecture’s Rincon | Bates House, a contemporary re-conceptualized row house in Washington, D.C. The firm’s latest project, a new charter school for D.C., is designed to accommodate a new approach to teaching. The school has adopted a new pedagogy, known as the Paragon Teaching Method – an interesting choice as the school is situated in the US’s capital. This method replaces the traditional way of learning history and encourages an integrated approach that emphasizes how one idea builds on and evolves into another. “In Paragon, students study history across continents, and gain a profound understanding of the manner in which many ideas develop at the same time in independent cultures unaware of the other’s breakthroughs. Through this, students develop a larger picture of history and the associated interrelationships,” explained a Mosaica Education statement.

More about the school, including more images, after the break.

Check out, quite possibly, the longest bench you’ve ever seen! Studio Weave’s bench, which can accommodate an astonishing 300 people, weaves along the beach at Littlehampton, West Sussex for 324 meters. Part of a larger waterfront redevelopment plan, the bench follows the existing promenade which runs from the harbor toward Worthing, and terminates at the East Beach Café.

More about this crazy bench after the break.

Last night, as Christopher Hawthorne reported for the LA Times, the Hammer Museum played “Koolhaas Houselife”, a comical and witty documentary by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoîne that follows Guadalupe Acedo, the cleaning woman, as she maintains the 1998 masterpiece.

Although architects, designers and engineers may look at the House of Bordeaux and admire its dramatic cantilever, the conceptually thrilling idea of the central lift for the handicapped client, and the circular windows that vary in size and placement according to the heights of the different residents, what is it like to occupy that space on a daily basis?  After all, it is a house, and what is it like to do some of the most basic chores in an award winning building?

More including a short trailer after the break.